If only there would come a day when you would not turn from me...

[lone_must_stand]

[ n a m e ; ]	Aeriel
[ c a n o n ; ]	The Darkangel Trilogy
[ g a m e ; ]	in transit and transition

{ ACTION / NETWORK / VOICE / WHATEVER WELCOME }

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[and_warrior_arise]

He sits next to her. He cannot claim that he understands - this is science beyond his reckoning, his expertise is not in this but in people - but he understands Oriencor's madness in terms that are more intimate than any others.

"Aeriel, look at me."

He is trying to look at her, trying to get her attention away from the fish. "This is my fault, and you know it," he says, simply, completely.

[lone_must_stand]

She does look up at him, hollow and tired, her hands in her lap again. None of them are blameless, but this is Oriencor's work alone.

"We're not meant to get attached," she says, looking back at the mess on the floor. A mess, that's the worst of it; all the individuality gone from the dozen little bodies.

"You didn't choose revenge."

[and_warrior_arise]

He is silent for a long time.

"But it is revenge for my actions, not yours," he says, and it's the truth. It was not Aeriel's fault. "I will handle this, Aeriel. I promise." He reaches for her hand, but his fingers come just close enough, and then he pauses.

"I'm sorry."

[lone_must_stand]

She doesn’t close the distance between their fingers. There is still something about him, his interest in her, that she finds incomprehensible; and besides, she is still in shock, absorbed in her loss. It isn’t only her personal sorrow, or the impact this will have on her work-- all her research wasted-- but the wasteful brutality of it, that strikes her hardest. That Oriencor could destroy innocent creatures for a personal slight, even if it were Aeriel’s fault that she had lost Irrylath’s undivided attention.

“And how can you handle such a thing?”

More weary than bitter, she looks up at him.

“No one can give back what she has taken.”

[and_warrior_arise]

"How can I handle her, you mean," he says. It is the eternal question, the one that comes up again and again. How do you handle Oriencor. How do you not go mad. It is not an easy question to answer, so he sits and thinks on it for a moment, pauses over it, and shakes his head.

"Once, she was not so frightening. She seemed like a treasure, one that I could never have, and so I had to have her. She seduced me. She...ensnared me." He says it like there was no choice for him in this matter, but there was, of course there was. "She has taken so much and she will take nothing more." He leans in, careful. "I will handle this matter, I promise you."

sssorrry i am slooooooowwwww <3

[lone_must_stand]

There is no handling her, Aeriel thinks. Her gaze unfocuses, slips back to the roiling tank, the dark water hiding the bulk of the worm as it lashes about, though from time to time its segmented side brushes against the glass. It is too little space, she thinks absently; room enough for a school of gargoyles, but cruel to the cruel creature it now houses.

"I will not have you harm her in my name,"

she says evenly, warningly. She does not know what he intends, but she cannot stand the idea that this violence might continue, might be carried on and on.

[and_warrior_arise]

"Harm-" he says, suddenly, his eyes wide. "I will not - I would not harm her, not ever -" he continues, and finally shakes his head. "I am not the sort of man who would hurt someone for such reasons. I will handle her. I will be clear."

There are other things that Irrylath can hold over Oriencor, other things that he knows, other things that will keep her from another moment of lashing out.

[lone_must_stand]

She stares up at him, her gaze still hollow. He has, perhaps, taken that more literally than she meant it; though perhaps it is because Oriencor is not so vulnerable as she. To kill Oriencor's creatures would be an affront because they are her possessions; Aeriel sees hers as her charges, lives she is meant to protect.

Oriencor will not be handled so easily, she imagines. But she cannot say that, cannot voice that doubt.

[and_warrior_arise]

He looks at her for a moment, and then he crosses the space between them, he kisses her on the mouth, his hand in her hair, cupping the back of her head, and then he stops, and stares.

"I'm sorry."

He says it although he's not sorry.

[lone_must_stand]

It is the first time she has wanted to shy away from his touch; the first time his words have not rung true.

She doesn't pull back, but she turns her face so his lips only graze hers; there is something wrong about it. Perhaps only the way it intrudes upon her grief. Already she is beginning to come to herself; her fingers are still numb, but the feeling is coming back to her heart.

"What will you do?" she asks, as though he had not kissed her.